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Widely considered the standard history of the profession of literary studies, Professing Literature unearths the long-forgotten ideas and debates that created the literature department as we know it today. In a readable and often-amusing narrative, Gerald Graff shows that the heated conflicts of our recent culture wars echo—and often recycle—controversies over how literature should be taught that began more than a century ago. Updated with a new preface by the author that addresses many of the provocative arguments raised by its initial publication, Professing Literature remains an essential history of literary pedagogy and a critical classic.“Graff’s history. . . is a pathbreaking investigation showing how our institutions shape literary thought and proposing how they might be changed.”— The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism
E-Book Content
Professing L iterature
GERALD GRAFF
Professing Literature An Institutional History Twentieth Anniversary Edition
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
Chicago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London 0 1987,2007 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2007 Printed in the United States of America
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ISBN-13: 978-0-226-30559-2 (paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-30559-7 (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Graff, Gerald. Professing literature : an institutional history / Gerald Graff. Twentieth anniversary ed. p. cm. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-30559-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-30559-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. LiteratureStudy and teaching (Higher)-United States-History. 2. Criticism-United States-History. I. Title. PN70.G7 2007 801’.9509734c22 2007010651
8 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI 239.48-1992.
Contents
I
Preface Twenty Years Later Acknowledgments Introduction: The Humanist Myth
vii xxiii i
LITERATURE IN THE OLDCOLLEGE: 1828-1876 The Classical College 3 Oratorical Culture and the Teaching of English 2
THEEARLYPROFESSIONAL ERA: 1875-1915 4 The Investigators (I): The New University 5 The Investigators (2):The Origins of Literature Departments 6 The Generalist Opposition 7 Crisis at the Outset: 189-1915 SCHOLARS VERSUS CRITICS:1915-1950 8 Scholars versus Critics: 1915-1930 9 Groping for a Principle of Order: 1930-1950 10 General Education and the Pedagogy of Criticism: 193-19 5 0
i9 36
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145 I 62
SCHOLARS VERSUS CRITICS: 194-1965 11 History versus Criticism: 1940-1960 1 2 Modern Literature in the University: 194-1960 13 The Promise of American Literature Studies 14 Rags to Riches to Routine
209 226
OF THEORY: 1965PROBLEMS 15 Tradition versus Theory Notes Index
247 263 305
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V
Preface Twenty Years Later
One of the challenges for me in writing Professing Literature: A n Institutional History was to keep the argument from overwhelming the history. I wanted my story of the emergence of professional academic literary study in America to be useful to readers who might disagree with my polemic on how the institution went wrong and how to set it right. And I wanted a book that would have a shelf-life after the controversies that shaped its writing had subsided. Others will judge how well I succeeded, but Professing Literature is clearly history told from a point of view, an effort to change the institution it describes. Not surprisingly, many of the book’s commentators have focused on my argument that the controversies that have roiled the wat